Did you see us featured on Good Morning America?! They did a segment on recent trends toward families using holiday gift registries to manage gift giving. GMA wanted to know: are they efficient.. or are they rude? Do they help prevent re-gifting and bad gift situations or do they fly in the face of etiquette? They shared some information from a study at Harvard Business School and got some feedback from people on the street and online.

The answer? Registering for gifts rocks! Well, we may be slightly biased- but a lot of people agree!

The results of a series of studies at HBS revealed that gift recipients perceived gifts as more thoughtful when they were given from a wishlist.

They found, “gift recipients are more appreciative of gifts they explicitly request than those they do not. In contrast, gift givers assume that both solicited and unsolicited gifts will be equally appreciated. At the root of this dilemma is a difference of opinion about what purchasing an unsolicited gift signals: gift givers expect unsolicited gifts will be considered more thoughtful and considerate by their intended recipients than is actually the case.”

So what do they mean? That oftentimes a short cut to gift-giving happiness lies in registering for gifts you’d like to receive or buying gifts for others from their own wishlists. Beyond the benefit of knowing that the recipient will love the gift, there are additional benefits to using a registry like saving time and money. Registries mean less time spent researching and tracking down the perfect gift since you’ll know exactly what they want. And with a full picture of the desired gifts of the entire family, it is easier to meet your budget for the season as a whole.

While undoubtedly some people will be resistant to move to the registry model for family gifting occasions, the time savings and assuredness of a perfect gift are enough for many people to make the shift. When you do, we hope you’ll use CheckedTwice!

To see our segment on Good Morning America, click here. To read more about the results of the Harvard Business School studies on gifting, click here. And to sign up to use CheckedTwice as a family gift registry for the upcoming holiday season, click here. Happy Gifting!

We are thrilled to be mentioned in the article on Christmas gift registries. As a loyal reader of The New York Times myself, I am really proud to see our name in the paper.

In the article, author Austin Considine mentions how online gift registries like CheckedTwice have made the gift giving process during the holiday season easier.  Considine mentioned a few other registries as well, including ones that are specific to large retail stores.

So you might be wondering – why CheckedTwice?  What makes CheckedTwice different from the other registries listed, like the Nordstrom registry?  Why choose CheckedTwice instead?

Here are a few reasons why CheckedTwice’s unique system is perfect for your family:

1. CheckedTwice isn’t about shopping for you, it’s about shopping for them.

Holiday shopping is stressful, but usually not because you’re worried about what you want.  Instead, it’s because you don’t know what to buy for other people, especially your picky sister-in-law or your 10-year old niece (who is already way cooler than you).  CheckedTwice makes it really easy for you to sign up your whole family and connect them on one site.  Accessing everyone’s wish list in your family is simple, and everyone can coordinate to know who’s buying what for whom.  Unlike other gifting sites that focus on what you want, CheckedTwice is focused on what they want – so you know exactly what to get your mother, your father, your sister, your uncle, and so on by just using one site.

2. CheckedTwice lets you add gifts from any online retailer. 

Unlike Amazon Wish list or Nordstrom’s gift registry, CheckedTwice lets you add products to your wish list from any online retailer, increasing your range of gifting options significantly.

3. CheckedTwice is full of surprises!

One of CheckedTwice’s unique features is the ability to add a Surprise Gift to someone else’s list.  The rest of the family will be able to see your surprise, but the recipient won’t.  For users who are worried that online gift registries are taking the fun out of  the holiday season, no worries – CheckedTwice still keeps all the fun secrets and surprises of Christmas.

4. CheckedTwice is visually organized.

With our pin board layout, it becomes very easy to see exactly what everyone wants and organize your own list as well. You can view another family member’s list with just one click, instead of fishing through a sea of archived emails.  Once you’re in their list, our wish list wall makes it very easy to see exactly what products they want right away, instead of having to research them individually.  This eye-catching layout makes you wonder why you were ever even trying to coordinate using Google Spreadsheets.

5. CheckedTwice is more than just Christmas.

CheckedTwice isn’t just focused on holiday shopping. Instead, it emphasizes what we think is more important – connecting the family.  Once your family is all signed up for CheckedTwice, every gift giving event – whether it be birthdays, weddings, Mother’s day, or so on – can include the whole family again. Reconnecting the family just became that much easier – and remember, it’s also totally free!

Once again, we’re very excited to be in The New York Times. To see the article, click here, and don’t forget to sign your family up!

Happy gifting!

-CheckedTwice